Degenerate Art – Arguments of Taste

Branding modern art in its entirety as “degenerate” was not the only option available to the Nazi regime, the alternative being to accept an Aryanised form of Expressionism as German art. 2. The two exhibitions held in Munich in 1937 ( Entartete Kunst Degenerate Art, Große Deutsche Kunstausstellung Great German Art Exhibition) marked the official and total rejection of modernism by the Nazi regime in favour of conservative, naturalist kitsch. 3. The banal, radical conservative tropes against modernism – moralisation, nullification, traumatisation, irrationalisation, infantilisation, primitivisation – morphed into an ideological-political stance. 4. The analogy between Nazi art and Socialist Realism is highly exaggerated.